At first the missing man’s mates think he’s gone off for a swim in a nearby stream, one of our few pleasures in this warm weather, for his small pack of belongings is still very much in place, next to the mat where he slept. A search of the banks of the stream reveals no trace of him.
Then the tracker comes into play. Trackers are people who can follow trails others can’t even see, a crushed leaf, a broken twig, a bit of bark gone from a tree, a small dent in a path of beaten earth, the remaining faint aroma of beedi smoke. They are rare, and we are lucky to have such a good one in the group. As a tracker, he’s also good at evading other trackers working for the police, and he’s saved our lives several times.
This is our first runaway in seven years, and none of us are prepared for it. The priorities are clear. First, we catch the runaway. We have already labelled him a traitor, so we try him. Then we punish him. There is no doubt he is guilty: by our rules, the act of fleeing the camp is sufficient evidence. In a brief discussion session where everyone assembles, the collective decides to go all out to find him.
Catching the runaway requires only the tracker and a few people to help him hold the runaway when he catches up. The remainder of the group is “free”, so we use the time to re-examine ourselves, re-educate ourselves. Re-education has largely become, for most of us, listening to speeches, and, for a few of the articulate ones, making them. We’ve heard them all before, and have no interest in hearing them all over again, because there are pressing matters to be seen to. Food, for instance, and shelter, and cleaning up, the usual processes of life.
But all that is suspended while the search for the traitor proceeds, for he seems to have become the biggest enemy we have. But no. As the leaders speak, we learn the true nature of the enemy, and its name. The name of the enemy is pity.
I know the runaway, of course, but not much about him. He is about seventeen years old, and has been with us for nearly three years. He was blooded a month ago, when he participated in a raid on a plantation from where we abducted a member of the family that owns it. The family paid the ransom, and the abductee was returned, though not in as good a condition as the family might have wished.
The traitor protested, half-heartedly, at how we treated our prisoner. Yes, the man was a prisoner. He had maltreated workers, gathered wealth from their sweat, and paid to have some of them arrested when they protested. Later, the money was paid, and the hostage returned. We released the hostage early one morning, on the outskirts of a small town where someone would see him in a matter of hours, if not minutes, after our colleagues had confirmed that they got the money. We never get to see any money, though… but that’s another story.
The group locates the runaway thanks to an informer, who tells us whose house he is in, and in which village. It’s a village that we have contributed to, dug wells in, harvested crops at, as part of building our support network. Now this family in the village has let us down, and they must be punished, besides the traitor. The family will be wiped out, and the village. Well, the village will suffer. No government agency reaches it. Its inhabitants have to depend on themselves for water and food, and water can be very scarce indeed. We used to help them with their water supply and the harvest, and will stop that.
A flicker of regret passes through me. There are people in the village who I like. They’re poor people: most of them have even less than we do, but we have a network to help us through bad times, or to hide us from the khakis. The regret has grown stronger with the years, but I have no idea when I have felt it before. It’s like a ghost.
Towards ten at night, a group of six is assigned to fetch the traitor from his hideout. They come back with the captive, all tied up and gagged, and report that they whipped the entire family with whom he took refuge.
His gag is removed, and his feet hobbled, his ankles tied with a rope that stretches two hand spans, eighteen inches. He can walk, in short strides that make him look like a puppet, but he can’t run. His hands tied behind his back by the group that captured him, are freed and retied in front of him. In the firelight, with the whole unit assembled in the clearing, we await the leader. Soon, word reaches us that the leader will arrive only a few hours after sunrise, so we disperse to our beds in the clearing – there is no need for shelter in this weather – after sentry duties are assigned.
I lie sleepless through the night. Our beds are in the open, a little away from the trees, and as the breeze drives the clouds across the sky, I glimpse Mars almost directly above, reddish and unwinking. We have been taught to use the planets to get a sense of direction, no more, but the idea of a planet millions of miles away seems almost magical on these nights.
Somewhere in a treacherous corner of my mind I hope the runaway gets away to a road, and there gets a lift in a lorry or some other vehicle. That’s extremely unlikely, because this whole district is marked off as dangerous, and people avoid travelling at night. What about the family that sheltered him? Are they relatives, thinking that the bloodline matters? We have been told never to place family above the global society of humans, of mankind.
I think about it through the night, and find no evidence of a common humanity. Everywhere we look there is conflict. Even in our little society, there is conflict, and pretence. There is also a method of dealing with conflict. A bureau deliberates decides what is to be done, and that must be done, regardless. There is little room for dissent: the bureau is a black box, with outsiders unable to enter into the details of the arguments that the bureau listens to.
When the runaway is caught, he will be tried by a peoples’ court. He has run away, no doubt, and will be found guilty. The court will issue the sentence, which will be death by firing squad, and he will be executed immediately.
Of late, I, too, have been thinking of treachery…
The group return before dawn, dragging the hostage. Fires and lamps are lit, and the marks on his face become visible. He has been beaten, and has struggled. His clothes are torn, his face bloody, his hair dishevelled, his skin covered in dust, sweat, and blood. He seems to have wept on the way, but his tears have dried up.
He will be kept captive until daylight, and be tried immediately after sunrise. There is no formal prison enclosure. He sits in the clearing, hands tied, ankles hobbled. They offer him nothing, no water or food. In the face of all this hostility, he maintains his composure. He asks for nothing, and does what he is told to do: shut up and keep still.
I volunteer for guard duty. No one is surprised. I have always volunteered for work of any kind that doesn’t involve killing, like cooking or cleaning or sentry duty. Work carries its own compensation, regardless. Then comes the thought that hard work is what has enabled me to sleep at night, safe in the conviction that I was doing good.
In the firelight I occasionally see his eyes gleam in his thin, dark face with the big cheekbones and no extra flesh. He sweats in the still air, partly for the warmth, and partly perhaps from the fear that he has decided not to show. His running away was an act of courage, I begin to think. The group who caught him say that he came without fuss, and took his beatings without complaint, except for a bout of tears before they dragged him away from the village. Perhaps he came quietly to minimize the damage the group will do to the villagers, to the people who sheltered him. In that case, his act of coming without fuss is an act of greater courage…
Never have I felt this so strongly before: if the rest of society used upon us the methods that we use on our own, we would not survive. The thought shakes me, leaves me vaguely nauseous. With this comes a decision: I will no longer be a party to torture, or to killing. I never did like the idea of doing these things, but was persuaded to believe they were necessary. That persuasion is wearing off.
By and by the runaway dozes off. His head sags on his shoulders in sleep or utter weariness, I cannot tell which. My fellow sentry, a girl – she is only ten years younger than me but seems like a child – also nods off, and I do not wake her. These stolen moments of solitude are increasingly important, I don’t know why.
By daylight we are ready. Leaders of groups within a certain radius have been told, and there are more than a hundred revolutionaries to observe the trial and the execution that will surely follow. Most observers are dull-eyed, but a few, perhaps one in five, seem to be looking forward to the spectacle. For the first time it appears that it’s from the ranks of these few, the ones who are going to enjoy the spectacle, that the leaders will be chosen…
Included in this site by permission of the author, Shashi Warrier; from his book, My Name is Jasmine, published in 2025 by Speaking Tiger (India)
